This has not been a good few months for the airline industry and, particularly, for Malaysian Airlines. It has been an even worse few months for the families and friends of individuals who flew on MH 370 or MH 17. You will remember that MH 370 left Kuala Lumpur on March 8th bound for Beijing. Less than an hour after take-off, the plane vanished from radar and, apart from potential pings between it and a satellite for the next five or six hours, it essentially disappeared. The 227 passengers and 12 crew members are assumed lost in the south Indian Ocean. July 17th, MH 17 took off from Amsterdam bound for Kuala Lumpur. The plane is assumed to have been shot down by pro-Russian extremists over the Ukraine. The wreckage and remains are a horrific sight. 283 travellers and 15 crew perished.
I read an article in The (London) Telegraph. Olivia Goldhill wrote, “The intense grief of those who lost loved ones on either plane is too painful to comprehend … But one family experienced loss on both flights. Kaylene Mann, from Queensland, lost her brother and sister-in-law on MH370. She lost her stepdaughter and stepdaughter’s husband on MH 17. Grief and loss specialist, David Kessler, says it’s impossible to understand how anyone can process a double trauma like this. It is “complicated grief” and it can be debilitating, with intensified feelings of anger and shock. Kessler says, “You have so many feelings and so much anger or distrust of the world, that often people never get over this kind of sadness and loss.” These people are likely to feel afraid of everyday activities. “They no longer live in a world that’s safe—they have loved ones that go off and disappear. …It might be hard to say goodbye to your kids when they’re just going to school,” he explains. “That kind of fear could last a lifetime.” “They no longer live in a world that’s safe or stable.”
Personally, I became aware of the fact that this is not a safe or stable world growing up in Belfast. As a child and then teenager, I encountered animosity, trouble and death. I watched the events of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry on the television news and, from my neighbourhood, a hill that overlooked the city of Belfast, I saw and heard a number of the 22 bombs that went off in a 75 minute period on what was called “Bloody Friday.” As a child, the 25 mile journey to my grandmother’s house had been largely uneventful, apart from a much looked forward to stop for an ice cream in a town called, Newtownards. By 1972, those trips might involve having the car pulled over by the British Army, or worse, by some local, paramilitary thugs armed with baseball bats and chains. There was no telling what they’d do as they tried to show themselves in charge of their home turf. The world became unstable, unsafe, and great care was needed.
Of course, a person does not need to be in a troubled area, or a place of civil strife, to know that the world is unstable. Even in relatively peaceful places, lives can be turned upside down by a tornado, a tsunami, a nuclear event. On individual levels, death, divorce, job loss, drug addictions or substance abuse or mental or physical illness whether personal or among family members or friends can wreak havoc in lives. We live in a world in which we, unfortunately, encounter pain and things that “pain” us. Any stability that we have doesn’t seem to last forever. When we least expect it, something comes along to disrupt, change, or ruin.
It was in the midst of a similar, unstable environment that Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. It was around A.D. 56, maybe 23-25 years after his dramatic encounter with Christ. He had been through all sorts of things in the intervening years. He had been an educated, religious Jew, associated with the Pharisaic party. He had spent a few years in Arabia processing all that had happened in Jesus. An initial meeting with Peter and the others in Jerusalem to learn more. Then he started out on his missionary tours, eager to tell people about his earth-shattering experience of Jesus. It was all too incredible for him. The Jesus-thing held so much promise and hope that he was compelled to go out, to encourage others to turn and find new life.
Along the way, however, Paul encountered opposition. Not everyone wanted to hear the good news. Not everyone was moved by the cross and resurrection. Not everyone wanted Paul to succeed. In a letter to Christians in Corinth, he expressed how he had been flogged. Five times receiving 40 lashes minus 1, three times beaten with rods. Once he was stoned. Three times he was shipwrecked. On his journeys for the gospel, he encountered danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from his own people, danger from Gentiles. He spent many sleepless nights, hungry, thirsty, and cold. From Jewish and Roman documents some years later in the first century, we know that the church did face significant persecution as early as the 60s from both Jewish and Roman sources. What Paul experienced seems to have been the beginnings of this, the early stages of that persecution. Life for Paul was unsafe, unstable, yet he managed to keep going. Regardless of the personal cost, he was able to go out and tell others the phenomenon that was Jesus.
What kept him going? What gave Paul the strength? We catch glimpses of it throughout his writings; glimpses of something he held on to, glimpses of strength and confidence, regardless of what life would throw at him. Paul had an incredible hope and this particular chapter of Romans is full of hope. In the face of God’s coming judgment, he can write, “There is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” In the midst of persecution, he encourages the young Church, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed in us.” He is pointing them to the future. He is pointing them to something that awaits the people of God. He is pointing them to a resurrection, the “redemption of our bodies,” and he says, “in this hope we were saved. The thing that seems to give him strength and fortitude, the thing that brings him peace, hope, and even joy in all circumstances is his assurance of a resurrection. Buoyed with that Paul could face anything and he can write to the Roman Christians, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors … For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That is quite a list Paul gives. A list that lets us know that our battle is not just with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and things unseen. I want to pick up on a couple of the more emotional and spiritual things for a moment. Paul says, for instance, death cannot separate us from the love of God.
Many people view death as an end. Many see it as the end of existence as we know it. Yet Paul, moved by his experience of the risen Christ, moved by his knowledge that God’s Spirit dwells in the body of the Christian, knows that Christians live with Christ, they die with Christ, and they will rise with Christ (v.11). It’s that resurrection theme again. God’s Spirit remains with us, and death, far from being the end, is only one step nearer to God’s presence.
I had a friend who passed away some 15 years ago from leukaemia. It was awful to watch him slip away but he was a very strong pastor and Christian and I don’t know that I have ever witnessed a man handle the last battle better than he. I visited him regularly in Princess Margaret Hospital and in the final weeks he ministered as much to me as I felt I did to him. His confidence was incredible. On one visit, he pulled out his hymnbook and he said that he had been reading the hymns and one had become his favourite. He read to me, “Day by day and with each passing moment, Strength I find to meet my trials here; trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment, I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.” The last lines of verse three contain the words, “Help me Lord, when toil and trouble meeting, E’er to take, as from a father’s hand, One by one, the days, the moments fleeting, Till I reach the promised land.” He was radiant as he shared this with me. I think that he had the same assurance that Paul had. He could face it all because he knew that even death was not the end, but just a turn in the road. God’s Spirit is in us, God’s love continues. Even death cannot separate us from the love of God.
Then Paul mentions several forces, “Angels and heavenly rulers (“demons” NIV)” … can never “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” No powers can hurt us either, “neither height nor depth.”
We don’t always see the world quite the way the ancient people saw it. In Paul’s day, the world was deemed to be permeated with spiritual forces, good and evil. The realm of the gods was great and powerful. They had to be appeased to stop life on earth from slipping into chaos. There were gods in the heavens, the high places, and gods in the underworld, the depths, and these powers could very much affect and influence a person’s life.
I’m not so sure that we are that far away from pre-modern thinking. I remember in Ireland, lots of talk about bogeymen, banshees, and the fairies. Some of it was to frighten children into staying in at night but not all of it, but there were those who believed. I am not going to get into it but a number of months ago, I had an experience that was bizarre at best, it raised every hair on my body. I hadn’t thought much about the spiritual or ghostly world in years, but this forced me to talk to others and I have been incredibly surprised at how many people, even educated people, who believe that there is a parallel world of spirits and forces that sometimes interacts with ours.
Paul writes to a people that considered spiritual forces to be very real. They had power, great power. People feared the spirit realm, they acknowledged that the battles of life were not just with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and things unseen. But Paul had met the risen Christ. He had experienced the power of God first hand, and because of this he more or less says, “There may be forces out there but they are no match for the force of God. There is no angel or ruler, no god in the high places or in the depths, no spirits or ghosts or goblins that can match the power of YHWH, as he was called in the Old Testament, the LORD. There is nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”
So here is Paul, seeing his brothers and sisters in Christ suffering and being persecuted in the world, then, struggling against what they perceived to be spiritual forces interfering with life because of their faith. There are earthly struggles with hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword (v.35); and there are spiritual struggles with the forces of death, angels, demons, powers in the heights, powers in the depths (v.38). But Paul is so assured of God and God’s power, he is so assured of God’s power even over death as evidenced in the resurrection, he is so assured of our eternal salvation, that he says, we have great hope - nothing in all creation can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Some great literature has come out of Russia over the years. A while ago I read Solzhenitzen's work entitled "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic.” Ivan was placed in one of the Soviet prisons in Siberia. Life in that prison was absolutely miserable. It was horrid. He wrote of men being abused, beaten, made to do the most degrading things. Survival was difficult. But Solzhenitzen noted that there were some who did better than others in the strife. Some had something inside of them that helped them survive the most terrible of conditions. Prison life involved battles of degradation, persecution, abuse and torture and the ones who best coped, were Christians, people who looked beyond what the earthly into the glorious light of eternity. There’s this thing that Jesus brings us, regardless of our circumstance, it is hope. Paul had that hope. My friend with Leukaemia had that hope, Christians in a Soviet prison had hope such that even when life all around them was falling down, they could see something better ahead that all the torture and degradation could never take away.
That hope is for us too, regardless of what struggles we may face in life. Let us truly hear the words again,
Who indeed will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.